VOICE OF COURAGE: Selected speeches of Obafemi Awolowo (Vol 2)

Full text of lecture delivered by Chief Obafemi Awolowo at the First Lecture in the University Of Lagos Annual Lecture Series 011 Friday, 15th March, 1968.

Continued from last week

It is a notorious Fact that, under the capitalist system, abundance is punished, and scarcity is rewarded; so much so that an economic recession may occur simply because people have produced too much of the good things of this world. Indeed, the Great Depression of 1929-31 has been aptly described as the ‘Crisis of Plenty’.

Inherently, the capitalist system generates strikes, lockouts, and various forms of labour disputes which whilst they last are extremely wasteful to the economy. But the interesting phenomenon which we would like here to emphasise is that, in spite of the achievements of capitalism in improving a lot of workers, these industrial strifes continue to take place in an ever-rising crescendo. It is evident that the more the efforts put forward by capitalism to meet the particular and pressing demands of labour, the more acute, the more acrimonious, and the better organised is the next industrial dispute.

In its dealings with other countries, every capitalist nation in the world has followed very closely and vigorously in the footsteps of its indigenous capitalists who also invariably hold the reins of power. As a result, there is as much cut-throat competition in international trade as there ever has been in domestic trade. In the struggle for survival, each nation has had to resort to all manner and kind of malpractices. These inevitably have reduced international trading from the high ideal pedestal of mutual benefits and complementary advantages among all the nations of the world, to the low harrowing level of veritable nuisance and bane. Dumping, tariff protection, devaluation, begger-my-neighbour policy, are among the malpractices which have been introduced by all the nations of the world in the pursuit of the narrow national self-interest of each against the others.

In this fierce and savage struggle, the strong and rich nations continue to wax richer and more powerful, whilst relatively, the weaker and poorer ones continue to wane in their weakness and poverty. Consequently, the gap between the rich and the poor countries widens with the times.

Because his sole aim is to make profit, the capitalist is completely indifferent to any project which has no prospect of yielding profit now or in the not too distant future. For this reason, and because the reins of Government are in the hands of capitalists, the education of the citizens in most capitalist countries is unplanned and distorted, and their health largely neglected. As a result, the masses of the citizens remain enslaved to heredity, develop malignant and injurious sentiments, and give unfettered reins to negative and poisonous emotions such as anger, hate, fear, jealousy, selfishness and greed.

Several devices have been introduced and adopted by the capitalists with a view to correcting the evils and righting the wrongs of the capitalist system. Three of them may be mentioned as follows: (1) taxation, (2) incentives to workers, and (3) rent and price controls. But all these and more have failed to achieve the purposes for which they are designed. Under the capitalist system, taxation is resented and strenuously evaded; incentives to workers are not only half-hearted but always hopelessly inadequate and unjustly calculated; rent and price controls are frustrated and ineffective in the face of short supplies of houses and goods.

• A lamentation on Nigeria

It is now recognised by practically all the capitalist countries, that economic forces must, to some extent, be controlled and channeled. Various devices have been adopted to effect the desired control.

There are monetary and budgetary controls. These are effected by means of the manipulation of interest rates, credit squeeze, open market operations, the issuing of administrative guidance and guideline to banking and other monetary institutions, imposition and remission of tax, export subsidy and import quota, tariff measures, devaluation, expansion and contraction of public works through the instrumentalities of deficit and surplus budgeting, etc, etc. Many governments and their agencies have entered into the field to increase the supply of houses, and to provide and operate public utilities. And a few have embarked on the direct management of some industries, and commercial undertakings.

It is believed that by means of all these manipulations of economic forces, and by means of indirect and direct controls and direction of specific categories of individuals, firms and transactions, efficient exploitation and mobility of resources, and co-ordination of the means of production, exchange, and distribution, will be achieved for the benefit and happiness of the people. But experiences have shown that all these partial, spasmodic, and half-hearted devices, which are erroneously given the label of PLANNING, have only succeeded in making the economic confusions under capitalism worse confounded.

To be continued